For some time sympathetic flashing of one flashlamp by the radiant energy from an adjacent flashlamp in multilamp photoflash arrays has been known. Moreover, it is not unusual for a chain reaction to occur wherein the flashlamps of an entire array are undesirably activated simultaneously. Obviously, such an event is troublesome, expensive and most inconvenient and undesirable.
Until the present time, the most common approach to providing flash protection from undesired sympathetic flashing has been the utilization of opaque reflectors or dividers between adjacent flashlamps. Normally, the array is of a size which permits the employment of reflectors as a separate array component. However, in miniaturized configurations space required for a separate reflector is not available and a different approach was required.
One such approach included the molding of a transparent cover member with a barrier member extending outwardly therefrom and positioned between a pair of adjacent flashlamps to serve as a shield and prevent sympathetic flashing. However, it was found that such transparent divider members were ineffective without a layer of paint or other measures to insure an opaque surface between the flashlamps. Again, the extra operations of painting or coating the divider members undesirably added to the manufacturing cost and, should a divider be left uncoated, resulted in undesired sympathetic flash failures with a consequent loss of lamps for the customer.